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<div>The department of linguistics invites you to a talk this
Thursday afternoon:</div>
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<div>Byron Ahn (Princeton University)<br>
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<div><b><u>Semantics-Prosody (Mis)Alignment and the Role of Syntax</u></b></div>
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<div>Th May, 16th, 14:15-15:45 Seminarraum 8, Sensengasse 3a, 1090
Wien<b><u><br>
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<div>Prosodic marking of focus (p-Focus) and focus semantics
(s-Focus) are known to be deeply related. In a stress-based
language like English, the general maxim is understood to be
that p-Focus must manifest within the domain of semantic focus
(e.g., Halliday 1967, Rooth 1992, Selkirk 1995, Truckenbrodt
1995, Krifka 2004, Büring 2016). It is for this reason that
“dogs CHASED cats”, with p-Focus on “chased”, cannot have an
interpretation where alternatives to “dogs” are considered
(i.e., with s-Focus on “dogs”). In this way, the location of
p-Focus and s-Focus “align”. This sort of alignment data has
been used to argue for the syntactic representation of focus
(e.g., Jackendoff 1972, Selkirk 1984).</div>
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<div>This talk explores a set of counterexamples to this generally
robust maxim: cases of semantics-prosody focus misalignments,
where p-Focus manifests outside the domain of s-Focus. An
English example of this is “BOY can she sing beautifully”, where
the s-Focus concerns degree of beauty but p-Focus is on “boy”.
Misalignment cases like this can be found regularly, and across
languages. We argue that these misalignments suggest the need
for a more complex post-syntactic derivation for the placement
of p-Focus. Moreover, misalignments furnish a new argument in
favor of syntactic representation of focus; the cases where
misalignments arise and how they are resolved is influenced by
the syntactic derivation.</div>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Daniel Büring Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Wien Sensengasse 3a, Raum O6.05
1090 Wien/Vienna (Austria) +43 1 4277 41710
fax (Sekretariat): +43 1 4277 9417 +43 664 60277-41710
homepage.univie.ac.at/daniel.buring/ <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:daniel.buring@univie.ac.at">daniel.buring@univie.ac.at</a> </pre>
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